Become the Smartest Man at Work

6 Steps to Become the Smartest Man at Work

Peak potential equals promotion.

April 29, 2015

Image from Thinkstock

Office life is violent.

And we don't mean in the employee-tenders-resignation-with-12-gauge-Mossberg sense. White-collar work is more of a mental firefight. Every a.m., your colleagues walk in with brains cocked and loaded with brilliant ideas, gunning to get themselves ahead and leave you behind in a corporate body bag. Bang! You're demoted.

Want to be the last man standing? Pack a bigger brain. Fortunately, you don't need an FBI background check to own some high-caliber gray matter. "The lifestyle decisions we make day by day can profoundly influence whether or not our brains work at their peak potential," says Jeff Victoroff, M.D., a professor of clinical neurology at the University of Southern California medical school and author of Saving Your Brain.

And peak potential equals promotion. So go ahead, squeeze the trigger on these simple get-smart strategies. You're guaranteed to blow away the competition.

While They're Stuck in Traffic. . . take a new route to work.

You probably won't pull into the parking lot any sooner, but at least you'll show up smarter. When British researchers used MRIs to measure the brain sizes of London taxi drivers, they found that cabbies with the most experience had the largest posterior hippocampi—the area associated with memory. Because taxi drivers have to memorize the detailed layout of a geographically complex city and need to recall that information every day, they literally "build bigger brains," says Dr. Victoroff.

Don't have a hack license? Any activity in which you push the intellectual envelope in a similar way—exploring new routes to work, hiking unfamiliar trails on the weekends, even taking on more new projects at work—will, over time, act like Miracle-Gro for your mind.

While They're Eating Bagels. . . have a protein shake.

Swiss researchers found that of three different breakfasts—high-carbohydrate, high-protein, and a balance of both—the high-protein meal helped men score highest on a computer memory test (similar to the electronic game Simon). "Short-term memory can be better after a protein-rich meal because the food increases your levels of the amino acids tyrosine and phenylalanine," says Karina Fischer, Ph.D., the lead study author.

To re-create the 4:1 protein-to-carbohydrate ratio used in the study, pick up a can of Nitro-Tech whey protein (available in chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry flavors, at muscletech.com and most gyms). Dump 1 scoop of Nitro-Tech into a glass, followed by 1/4 cup skim milk and 1/4 cup water. Stir and gulp. You'll maximize your memory for 3 hours. (An alternative you can chew: turkey jerky, which also has the right ratio.)